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Desiree Friede
Whoever has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the CatskillMountains. They are a branch of the great vAppalachian9-* family, andare seen away to the west of the river, swelling up to a noble height,and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season,every change of weather, indeed, every hour of the day, produces somechange in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they areregarded by all the goodwives, far and near, as perfect vbarometers.
At the foot of these fairy mountains the traveler may have seen thelight smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle roofs gleam amongthe trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the[10]fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village of greatage, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in the earlytimes of the province, just about the beginning of the government of thegood Peter vStuyvesant (may he rest in peace!), and there were some ofthe houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, builtof small yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows andgable fronts, surmounted with weathercocks.
In that same village, and in one of these very houses, there lived, manyyears since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, asimple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was adescendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in thevchivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siegeof Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martialcharacter of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple,good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor and an obedient,henpecked husband.
Certain it is that he was a great favorite among all the goodwives ofthe village, who took his part in all family squabbles; and neverfailed, whenever they talked those matters over in their eveninggossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of thevillage, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assistedat their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites andshoot marbles,[11] and told them long stories of ghosts, witches, andIndians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, he was surroundedby a troop of them, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, andplaying a thousand tricks on him; and not a dog would bark at himthroughout the neighborhood.
The opinions of this vjunto were completely controlled by NicholasVedder, a patriarch of the village, and landlord of the inn, at the doorof which he took his seat from morning till night, just movingsufficiently to avoid the sun, and keep in the shade of a large tree; sothat the neighbors could tell the hour by his movements as accurately asby a sun-dial. It is true, he was rarely heard to speak, but smoked hispipe incessantly. His adherents, however (for every great man has hisadherents), perfectly understood him, and knew how to gather hisopinions. When anything that was read or related displeased him, he wasobserved to smoke his pipe vehemently, and to send forth short,frequent, and angry puffs; but, when pleased, he would inhale the smokeslowly and tranquilly, and emit it in light and placid clouds, andsometimes, taking the pipe from his mouth, and letting the fragrantvapor curl about his nose, would nod his head in approbation.
From even this stronghold the unlucky Rip was at length routed by hisvtermagant wife, who would suddenly break in upon the tranquility ofthe assemblage, and call the members all to naught; nor was that augustpersonage, Nicholas Vedder himself, sacred from the daring tongue ofthis terrible virago, who charged him with encouraging her husband inhabits of idleness.
In a long ramble of the kind on a fine autumnal day, Rip hadunconsciously scrambled to one of the highest parts of the CatskillMountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel-shooting, and thestill solitudes had echoed and rechoed with the reports of his gun.Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on agreen knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of aprecipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all thelower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance thelordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majesticcourse, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a laggingbark, here and there sleeping on its glassy bosom, and at last losingitself in the blue highlands.
[16]On the other side he looked down into a deep mountain glen, wild andlonely, the bottom filled with fragments from the overhanging cliffs,and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun. For sometime Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually advancing; themountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys; hesaw that it would be dark long before he could reach the village, and heheaved a heavy sigh when he thought of encountering the terrors of DameVan Winkle.
As they ascended, Rip every now and then heard long, rolling peals, likedistant thunder, that seemed to issue out of a deep ravine, or rathercleft, between lofty rocks, toward which their rugged path conducted. Hepaused for an instant, but supposing it to be the muttering of one ofthose transient thundershowers which often take place in mountainheights, he proceeded. Passing through the ravine, they came to ahollow, like a small vamphitheater, surrounded by perpendicularprecipices, over the brinks of which trees shot their branches, so thatyou only caught glimpses of the azure sky and the bright evening cloud.During the whole time Rip and his companion had labored on in silence;for though the former marveled greatly,[18] what could be the object ofcarrying a keg of liquor up this wild mountain, yet there was somethingstrange and incomprehensible about the unknown that inspired awe andchecked familiarity.
What seemed particularly odd to Rip was that, though these folks wereevidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, themost mys[19]terious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party ofpleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of thescene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled,echoed along the mountains like rumbling peals of thunder.
As Rip and his companion approached them, they suddenly desisted fromtheir play, and stared at him with such fixed, statue-like gaze, andsuch strange, uncouth countenances, that his heart turned within him,and his knees smote together. His companion now emptied the contents ofthe keg into large flagons, and made signs to him to wait upon thecompany. He obeyed with fear and trembling; they quaffed the liquor inprofound silence, and then returned to their game.
He looked round for his gun, but in place of the clean, well-oiledfowling piece, he found an old firelock lying by him, the barrelincrusted with rust, the lock falling off, and the stock worm-eaten. Henow suspected that the grave revelers of the mountain had put a trickupon him and, having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun.Wolf, too, had disappeared, but he might have strayed away after asquirrel or partridge. He whistled after him, and shouted his name, butall in vain; the echoes repeated his whistle and shout, but no dog wasto be seen.
As he approached the village he met a number of people, but none whom heknew, which somewhat surprised him, for he had thought himselfacquainted with every one in the country round. Their dress, too, was ofa different fashion from that to which he was accustomed. They allstared at him with equal marks of surprise, and whenever they cast theireyes upon him, invariably stroked their chins. The constant recurrenceof this gesture induced Rip, involuntarily, to do the same, when, to hisastonishment, he found his beard had grown a foot long!
It was determined, however, to take the opinion of old Peter Vanderdonk,who was seen slowly advancing up the road. He was a descendant of thehistorian of that name, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of theprovince. Peter was the most ancient inhabitant of the village, and wellversed in all the wonderful events and traditions of the neighborhood.He recollected Rip at once, and corroborated his story in the mostsatisfactory manner. He assured the company that it was a fact, handeddown from his ancestor the historian, that the Catskill Mountains hadalways been haunted by strange beings. It was affirmed that the greatHendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept akind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of theHalf-moon; being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of hisenter[30]prise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river and the great citycalled by his name. His father had once seen them in their old Dutchdresses playing at ninepins in a hollow of the mountain; and he himselfhad heard, one summer afternoon, the sound of their balls, like distantpeals of thunder.
One afternoon when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boysat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face.They had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen,though miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its features.
And what was the Great Stone Face? The Great Stone Face was a work ofNature in her mood of majestic playfulness, formed on the perpendicularside of a mountain by some immense rocks, which had been thrown togetherin such a position as, when viewed at a proper distance, precisely toresemble the features of the human countenance. It seemed as if anenormous giant, or a vTitan, had sculptured his own likeness on theprecipice. There was the broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet inheight; the nose, with its long bridge; and the vast lips, which, ifthey could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from oneend of the valley to the other.
It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood withthe Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble,and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glowof a vast, warm heart that embraced all mankind in its affections, andhad room for more.
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